AI Deepfakes: Coming to Your Next Job Interview?

by John Jenkins

February 5, 2026

Here’s a scary scenario laid out in the intro to this Jones Walker blog:

The scenario sounds like science fiction: a candidate aces a video interview, clears a background check, and starts work only to deploy malware on day one. But it’s already happening. Gartner projects that by 2028, one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake. The FBI has documented over 300 US companies that unknowingly hired North Korean operatives using stolen identities and AI-generated personas. And the tools enabling this fraud are getting cheaper and more convincing by the month.

For employers, the question is no longer whether synthetic identity fraud will affect hiring. It’s whether your current verification processes can detect it, and what liability you face when they don’t.

The blog discusses the risks employers face from negligent hire claims as well as the risks that the verification tools they use to protect against these claims may give rise to disparate impact discrimination claims. It then draws lessons from the FTC’s 2023 enforcement action against Rite Aid to come up with a list of recommended controls that companies should implement to reduce these risks:

Test before you deploy. Rite Aid’s core failure was implementing facial recognition without assessing its accuracy or demographic performance. Any identity verification system, whether for detecting deepfakes or screening AI agent actions, requires documented pre-deployment testing.

Monitor after you deploy. Accuracy degrades. Deepfake technology improves. A system that worked six months ago may fail today. Ongoing monitoring with documented results isn’t optional; it’s what distinguishes defensible programs from negligent ones.

Train your people. Technology generates alerts; humans make decisions. Employees who act on AI-generated flags without understanding the risks of false positives create liability. The Rite Aid order specifically required employee training on system limitations.

Vet your vendors. Rite Aid deployed the technology despite its vendor’s express statement disclaiming “any warranty as to the accuracy or reliability of the product.” That disclaimer didn’t protect Rite Aid from FTC enforcement. Your vendor’s limitations become your legal exposure.